Starter Kit. Idea 329 of 500. Cluster 16
Hospitality schools attached to working hotels, where the students serve real guests
The mechanism, from the book
177,000 qualify every year and 45,000 get a place. The other 130,000 are a market that nobody has built for, and the polytechnic is not a second choice when it leads to a job.
The first step
Propose to one hotel general manager that a small group of trainees work shifts under their chefs and front-desk staff for a month, for a fee per trainee. Then recruit five students who missed a university place and would pay that fee. A month completed, and the hotel hiring one trainee at the end, is the proof.
- Who pays first
- A student without a university place who wants a hotel job and will pay fees for training that ends in real hotel experience.
- What leaves today
- The 130,000 without a university place have no route into hotel work that proves their skill to an employer.
Ask first
- Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission. Ask how a course run inside a working hotel can be accredited.
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether training standards for hotel staff exist that the course should follow.
Check before you spend
Who is responsible for trainees on shift, insurance for trainees in kitchens, and a written agreement with the hotel on hours, supervision and fees.
Find out these three numbers
- What fee would a hotel charge per trainee per month?
- What would a student pay for a month of real shifts?
- How many trainees did the hotel hire at the end?
A comparison from the book
Switzerland's apprenticeships. Chapter Fourteen
"Swiss studies find most firms earn back what an apprentice costs them before the apprenticeship even ends."
When trainees do real work, the hotel recovers its cost, so it has a reason to keep taking them.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.